Spargo wrote:RoosterMan wrote:Hostile Ashes crowd ‘worse than bikies and killers’
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Journalist Danielle Gusmaroli has covered riots, been teargassed and interviewed rapists, murderers and bikies, yet what she witnessed at the third Ashes test shook her. Read what happened
I’m not easily upset.
I’ve covered G8 summit riots and been tear-gassed and water-cannoned.
I have interviewed rapists, murderers and bikies, who have revealed unspeakable things to me.
I pride myself on my thick skin.
Yet after spending three days in Headingley’s Western Terrace — infamous for its raucousness and often violence — I concede I felt unnerved and intimidated.
The Barmy Army’s long standing default of labelling Australia cheats, even before Jonny Bairstow’s controversial stumping in the second Ashes Test at Lord’s, did not faze me.
But even Wonder Woman has her kryptonite.
The tipping point in the west side of Leeds ground that has hosted test cricket since 1899 came when the Barmy Army described an Aussie player — who I will not name — a “sex offender, a sex offender, a sex offender …”
Played on loop like an only-hits radio station, it was trolling at its nastiest and most litigious.
Yes, we all expect digs and jibes from impassioned supporters but this was next level.
Projectiles flew from the stands and the crowd hurled more abuse.
“Your mother takes it up the a***,” was one catch cry, targeted at a different Australian player.
“Travis gives good h**d,” they then spewed in a play on the middle-order batsman’s surname.
And “paedo” was hurled at another.
The worst behaviour I witnessed was on day three, after the game was delayed by nearly six hours because of rain.
Fans had returned from the pub, where they had killed time, glassy-eyed and unsteady on their feet for the start of play.
England fan Gareth Fare, 32, from north east Leicestershire, bleated “cheating Aussie bastards,” at players from the terrace front row before police ejected him from the stadium.
“Who have I offended?” he asked.
One of the three officers told him to apologise to the fans and leave.
“I apologised to the fans but I’m not saying sorry to the players — they’re out and out cheats,” he said, referring to the Bairstow incident.
He returned for the final day, stooping lower by ordering his friends to find as many cheating “Aussie bastards” as they could so they could call them a bunch of ‘wallaby shits’.
Let’s not forget, this came after England had won the third Test, at a time when they should be celebrating.
Earlier, former Australian skipper Steve Smith’s apparent pleas to the crowd to stop the pile-on fell on deaf ears.
Despite pressing his palms together, as if in prayer, the Barmy Army chanted “you’re no longer the captain,” in reference to the “sandpaper” cheating scandal in South Africa.
The language was caustic at times but it was more the aggression and venom with which it was delivered that offended.
I am British. These are me countrymen. It was shameful.
Former Australian cricket captain Kim Hughes, 69, told me at Leeds, “cricket fans have become more like football hooligans,” before chasing down a fan who asked him “is that your mistress you old c**t?
